


Miles to Go

by howlingautumn (orphan_account)



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:24:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4433681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/howlingautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep." Thorin's "mostly" inner soliloquy as he struggles to wake from the world that the Battle of the Five Armies threw him into. Someone may be able to help, but, mostly, this is a journey the King must take for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miles to Go

**Author's Note:**

> Formerly called themoonyautumn.

Firstly, Thorin had a massive headache.

Somewhere in the back of that majestic head of his a vague thought sprung up. “I hate people,” he said dryly, internally, and honestly really. The King Under the Mountain rubs at his eyes for a moment, wait, wait, wait. There are bandages covering his wrists, and his sides, and back, and wait, head.

What had he done . . .

Blood, blood seeps from the stone and rushes towards the bed like sea foam and it closes in on his cot and he screams and screams and screams for Azog to kill him finally so he can sleep. Blessed sleep.

When he wakes, this time towards the waking world and not a high-strung fever pitch where everything seeps fear and death and hate. When he wakes, this time he wakes to soft eyes and a mess of honey curls, that seem curlier than usual, and he would know, he dreams of those curls . . .

He dreams of those curls being rolled toward him as an Orc cuts swiftly into halfling skin easily, like a knife through soft butter. He dreams of those curls in front of him as they sprint through the darkness and he wants to throw his head back and unlock the laughter stuck under his ribcage because they are free, free, free, and nothing can ever take that from him.

Nothing, thinks Thorin, can ever take away that drunken sort of sway that comes from a half moon night in which his Company is smiling at him from over the fire and he lessens the crease of his brow for two, three seconds to let them know that he feels it too.

The Crown Princes, or as the Burglar calls them, The Nephews, call to him across the rocky yard in the Blue Mountains, and it is years ago and at the same time the seconds right here and now are ticking, and they call to him, “Uncle! Uncle! Uncle Thorin!” And he swings them both up and Kili laughs and laughs and laughs as Uncle’s beard tickles his nose.

Mahal, what he would do to keep his boys laughing. Anything to a limit, the sensible, regal part of his mind says in a mimic, you would keep them laughing until there is real work to be done, Erebor is what is important, Fili and Kili must learn to be . . . .

“Learn to be what?!” The Real Thorin snaps back, vicious and unmalleable, should my sister-sons learn to be greedy, angry, prideful princelings with all their kindness fleshed out of them by the horrors of the world, or should they, should they . . .

He does not realize he is crying until the hobbit whisks out a worn handkerchief of possibly dwarven make. “Bilbo . . . I . . .” but the burglar nods, gives a tender smile, that at one point in Thorin’s life he would have punched off of him and hurt until there was no more reason to smile. Today though, he just stares, the aching in his skull subsiding to a smaller ache, a more manageable one. “Thank you,” he says, recovering what dignity he can scrape up from the life debts he owes, “thank you.”

The halfling scrunches up his nose, thinks on his words, thinks on his words like one would chew on the end of a pipe, or sip tea. “Well,” Bilbo Baggins of the Shire starts, “I was a little worried that the brain damage the Defiler gave you made you sentimental. Bless you, I was wrong.”

And, for the first time in years, Thorin II Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain, laughs.


End file.
